


40 engine blocks

by sweetwatersong



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, Sentient Jaegers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3242696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five drabbles built around Raleigh Becket, about the co-pilots and Jaeger who save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	40 engine blocks

**mo(u)rning** , g

Can you imagine what it must have been like, to be in Anchorage on February 29th, 2020? To hear the warning sirens and run for cover, tucking yourself into scrap metal bunkers and waiting, praying, holding your breath to listen to the roar of the wind? You have faith in your Jaegers, you trust in your Rangers, but you are among two million people all hoping for the all-clear, the cessation of the PPDC’s eerie wail. And then to breathe a sigh of relief when the storm is all that’s coming, all you have to worry about now - to realize, to hear with confusion and disbelief that Gipsy Danger fell, that a Jaeger is gone -

What must it have been like, to look out towards the ocean, to feel grief tug at you and your gratitude? Two Rangers in a Jaeger have died for you, for two million people, and you are safe as the sea swallows their bones.

And in the morning the snow sweeps over the memorials you’ve made, frosting the fake flowers and thank you signs, and a Jaeger walks out of the sea to collapse on the beach.

 

 **seven mile stretch** , Raleigh Becket, g

He had every reason, every right to give up and sink down, down into the chilling Alaskan water, down into the dark depths he and Yancy ( _Yancy, Yancy, Yancy_ ) had walked through only so little time ago. It would be easy, his arm on fire (and sparks, were there sparks coming out of his veins or were they going into them?), his mind echoing and silent, his grief too bitter and salty to choke down. But when Raleigh was about to let the ocean swallow him – them. Them, him and Gipsy (no Yancy, oh God oh God oh God). Him they could do without, him they didn’t need (who wants a broken half of a whole? who wants a broken brother?). But Gipsy – Gipsy –

When Raleigh Becket had every reason to let himself die, it was his Jaeger that saved his life.

 

 **build me fairy tales and fires** , Raleigh Becket & Mako Mori, pg

It’s not much, it’s not enough, for these two strangers who found each other wandering through the forest (gingerbread houses and big bad wolves who eat up your family, eat up your heart) but he finds he’s looking at her, finds his hand is already outstretched and waiting, waiting. She is scared and wide-eyed and the tattered remains of a cloak flow like blood down her back - but she reaches back, curls her cold fingers around his and holds on.

There are monsters in these woods, towering and mighty and nigh invincible, but they are two who have nothing left to lose, who have dared to look into the shadows.

(There are monsters in these woods - and they will learn to fear these two.)

 

 **the heart is hard to translate (it has a language of its own)** Yancy Becket, Gipsy Danger, Raleigh Becket, g  
title from _All This And Heaven Too_ by Florence and the Machine

_And somewhere between activating the escape protocol and the surface, Raleigh Becket stops breathing._

Leaving. Alone. Hurt. Heart. No. She has fought so hard to protect them, to keep them with her, and He is leaving without a single goodbye, a single thought for her beyond the seconds on her countdown –

Gipsy Danger holds onto what little she has left of her human heart, and refuses to release it.

“Let him go,” Yancy tell her, with kindness, with understanding. His black-sensor-fingertips touch her console array, strangely defenseless in the spitting electricity and flickering lighting. He looks up at the cam she has watched them through, loved them through, and smiles.

“It’s time for us to let him go.”

With reluctance, with an emotion her processors cannot translate into anything but the resisting groan of bending metal and strained muscle strands, Gipsy opens her hold on the whisper of Raleigh’s consciousness.

“Thank you,” Yancy says affectionately, and she wants to curl around his data-ghost, to tether him through fierceness to her liquid circuits. He is all she has left, all she has in the last few seconds before the reactors in her chest hit critical, and against all reason, she is… scared. Instead, because He had asked it of her, she stretches her arms wide in the strange atmosphere and stares with faceless, cold hate at those who would have killed Him.

Who _have_ killed Yancy.

“You know, if they didn't exist, we wouldn’t have met you,” her constant pilot murmurs thoughtfully, fingers gentle on her metal. Gipsy would scoff, if she could, would let her coolants hiss with disdain at the idea of the Kaiju never having emerged. She is worth the lives that were lost to bring her into creation. She was worth what it took to bring her pilots to her.

“That’s my girl,” Yancy laughs, and somewhere in the memory cards she hears a familiar echo, a new giggle.

Her heart – _her_ heart, with fusion and reactors and a radioactive decay too quick for its time – expands, and the world goes white.

_In an escape pod an ocean away, Raleigh Becket wakes up._

 

 **untitled xii** , Raleigh Becket & Mako Mori, g

#RALEIGH BECKET #IS A DUMB PUPPY #IN A LUMPY SWEATER #THAT ALWAYS HAS HOLES IN IT (tags on art from flatbear.tumblr.com)

Five bucks says he ~~chews the holes himself~~ lets them get ripped just so Mako has a reason to fix them.

"Raleigh, again?" She asks, touching a particularly noticeable gap with light fingertips. He shrugs fractionally and gives her his best guileless expression. Meeting his innocent blue eyes, she flicks her own upwards with a faint exhale.

When their shift is over they settle in her room, the clatter of the Shatterdome only a murmur with the arrival of night. He thumbs through a dog-eared novel and leans against her legs as she perches on her bunk, sewing the holes shut with nimble fingers. It is comfort, it is rest, and it is home in a way neither of them has known before.

Mako hums under her breath while she works, and in the simple tune are long-ago days of peace.


End file.
